Anita Desai 'overjoyed' at daughter's Booker win

NEW DELHI: Novelist and three-time Booker nominee Anita Desai said she was overjoyed that her daughter Kiran had won the Man Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss.   

"I am proud, overjoyed. She has worked very hard on the book for the last eight years," she said.

After her Booker win on Tuesday, Kiran Desai thanked her mother profusely, describing her as almost a co-author of her book about the difficulties of life in post-colonial India and as an illegal immigrant.   

She said she owed her mother "a debt so profound and so great that this book feels as much hers as it does mine".   

"It was written in her company and in her witness and in her kindness," Kiran Desai said.   

Anita Desai, who has been a Booker Prize nominee three times but never won the award, was not present at the ceremony in England.   

She said she was afraid to attend in case her daughter was also passed over for the prize.   

"I was terrified that others may not see the beauty and quality of her work," said Anita Desai, whose novels, mostly set in India, also depict the experiences of characters who are isolated or out of place.   

"I would not have been able to bear it if she had not got the prize."   

The 35-year-old Kiran Desai beat five other authors, including favourite Sarah Waters and her book The Night Watch, to become the youngest ever woman to win the $92,700 award.